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Red Anjou and Cardamom Butter

I just can’t stand seeing food go to waste. It must be somewhat leftover (ha ha) from owning a restaurant; I’m also a manic recycler. When I noticed a neighbor was not picking the pears in their front yard, I had to step in. After asking of course, I foraged almost a bushel of beautiful Red Anjou pears.
I love pear and cardamom together and I though this would be a great way to marry those flavors and have a variety of uses. The finished product is a deep maroon and beautiful on a cheese plate or with lamb or pork. My kids will be eating it on toast and waffles. I swirled it in some Greek yogurt.
To do:
Wash, de-stem and cut out any bad parts of really any kind of pear. Quarter them and start cooking on medium, I added juice of 2 lemons for my huge batch.
Keep stirring and when you start to see a lot of liquid, put on low, uncovered until pears are clearly breaking down.
Let cool some and then process through your food mill. If you don’t have food mill you’ll peel and seed them. Cooking with the red peels gave it the lovely color though.
You now have awesome unsweetened pear sauce and you could stop here! I almost did because I’m arms ached so much from the food mill.
Making the butter can be 6-12 hours on very low heat, or you could use a crock pot. You want to reduce it until it mounds on a spoon. I added some cinnamon and a lot of cardamom at the beginning and then more cardamom towards the end. I added some cane sugar since I was also going so heavy on the spice, but you needn’t .
Then get your canning supplies ready.
I’ll be taking some to my first visit to the Boston Food Swap.